The Quarry’s Pulse

I’ve lived above the old Gable’s Quarry office for eight years now, ever since my partner, Dan, and I moved into the converted loft above the shuttered stone-cutting business. The building’s ground floor is a dusty museum of abandoned machinery and stacked granite slabs, a relic from the town’s mining days. The landlord, Mr. Ellis, keeps it as a sort of personal shrine to the family trade, though he rarely ventures inside.

It started about a month after we moved in. I’d be lying in bed, reading or just staring at the ceiling, when I’d feel a subtle vibration through the mattress. At first, I chalked it up to the old pipes or the wind rattling the building. But it became a regular occurrence, always when I was alone. Dan would be in the living room, or already asleep, and the bed would start to tremble. Not a side-to-side rattle, but a persistent, rhythmic pulse, as if something beneath the floor was breathing.

I tried to ignore it, but it grew more insistent whenever I focused on it. It was as if my attention was a switch. The moment I thought, ‘There it is again,’ the trembling would intensify, growing sharper, almost aggressive. It felt like a warning. I never told Dan; he’d think I was losing it. And he never felt it, no matter how many times I asked him to lie still and wait.

The bed shakes became a nightly ritual. I’d lie there, heart pounding, willing it to stop, but it only grew stronger, resonating in my bones. Then, about three years in, Mr. Ellis, the landlord, pulled me aside one afternoon as I was coming in. His face was grim, his eyes darting to the boarded-up door at the back of the quarry office. ‘You sleep upstairs, right?’ he asked, even though he knew. ‘That old quarry,’ he said, jerking a thumb toward the gaping pit behind the building, ‘they never filled it in properly. There’s a vein of granite runs right under your bedroom. Sometimes, at night, you can feel it—the earth settling, or something older.’ He wouldn’t say more, just muttering about his father and the accident that killed him down there.

After that, the shakes got worse. I started having dreams of being buried alive in a stone coffin, the walls closing in. The pulse in the bed became a heartbeat, synchronized with the thrum of the machinery in the quarry office below, even though the machines were silent. One night, I woke to find the bed vibrating so violently that the headboard was knocking against the wall. Dan was beside me, dead asleep, his breathing even. I looked down at the floor and saw a fine layer of gray dust, like the residue from stone cutting, spreading from the edges of the room.

Terrified, I went to the window and looked out at the quarry pit. In the moonlight, I could see the churned earth at the bottom, and something glinting—a pickaxe, partially embedded in the rock, as if someone had dropped it mid-swing. The pulse quickened, and I felt a pressure in my ears, a low hum. I knew, with a certainty that chilled me, that whatever was down there was aware of me, and it was waiting for me to acknowledge it.

The next day, I asked Mr. Ellis what had happened to his father. He stared at me for a long moment, then said, ‘He went down to check on a blasting cap that didn’t go off. The ground just… swallowed him. They found his lucky hat near the edge, but no body. They said it was a cave-in, but my mother always swore she felt the ground shake the day he died, even though no one else was near the quarry.’ He pointed to a faded photo on the wall of a man in a hard hat, standing proudly next to a slab of granite. ‘He used to say the quarry was alive, that it had a pulse. He said you had to respect it, or it would take you.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the silence. Then I heard it—a sound like grinding stone, coming from beneath the floorboards. I pressed my ear to the cold wood, and the shaking began, harder than ever. I could hear a voice, muffled, as if coming from deep underground, calling my name. It wasn’t a whisper; it was a rumble, like the earth itself speaking.

I sprang up, grabbed a flashlight, and ran down to the quarry office. The door to the back room—the one that led to the old mine shaft—was ajar. I shouldn’t have gone in, but the pulse was pulling me, a force I couldn’t resist. The air was thick with dust, and the beams creaked. At the far end, I saw a gaping hole in the floor, the edges raw and jagged, like something had burst upward from below. As I approached, the shaking grew so intense that the wall fixtures rattled. A voice boomed from the hole, ‘You know me. You’ve always known me.’

I turned to run, but the floor gave way beneath me. I fell, tumbling into the darkness, landing on a bed of sharp gravel. When I looked up, I saw a vast underground chamber, veined with glowing granite, pulsing with a sickly light. In the center, a figure stood—a man made of stone, his face a mask of anguish, his arms outstretched as if in supplication. The voice—now clear—said, ‘I’ve been waiting for someone to listen. The mountain wants a new voice.’

I woke up in my bed, covered in dust, Dan shaking me awake. ‘You were screaming,’ he said, his face pale. I tried to tell him about the pit, the voice, but he just stared at the floor. ‘There’s nothing under the house but the old foundation,’ he said. ‘You had a nightmare.’

Ever since, the bed shakes every night, without fail. And now, when I look in the mirror, I see a thin line of gray running through my hair, like a vein of granite. Dan tells me he feels nothing, but he’s started sleeping in the spare room. I lie alone, listening to the pulse, and I know it’s waiting for me to go back down there, to complete the transformation. I don’t know how long I can resist. The mountain’s call is growing stronger, and I’m beginning to think that maybe I was never meant to be an observer. Maybe I was meant to be the new voice for the quarry’s endless song.